Page 19

6/1/2009 4:01:28 PM

Quote :

"spoken like a true IBM consultant"

Spoken by somebody who has worked Tech Support too long to know when alternatives are better than doing it yourself. Also spoken by somebody who is building a house right now doing a LOT of work without contractors, heh.

I'd also like to see in this thread poor translations from the first line folks who initially pick up the phone to create the ticket before it gets passed on to you.
"Unable to upgrade getty care".

(muse on that for awhile)

[Edited on June 1, 2009 at 4:43 PM. Reason : .]

6/1/2009 4:42:25 PM

'Error connecting to sequel server' gets me every time.

6/4/2009 11:24:18 AM

6/10/2009 12:05:41 PM

^actually made me lol.

6/10/2009 12:16:24 PM

i lol'd too

(OH SHIT count: 4)

6/10/2009 1:04:03 PM

I once helped a customer that was having mail back up on their Exchange Server. He kept pronouncing "queue" like quway. I didn't have the heart to correct him.

My personal all time favorite was when I asked someone to select an option and he responded:

"You mean turn it blue?"

I still LOL when I think of that one.

6/10/2009 1:35:19 PM

ok so i have a problem you guys could probably help me with. I got a new to me laptop the other day and it has a super hi-res screen (1920x1200) and I love it however, the icons and text are super small (especially in Outlook) and it gives me a headache. I like the size of things with the 1680x1050 resolution but things look grainy. Is there a way to increase the size of the system text with out loosing the clarity of 1920x1200 res? I was l0oking around the internet for some kind of zooming feature but I haven't found anything yet.

6/10/2009 1:43:47 PM

^ control panel -> Display -> Appearance -> Effects and check the "Use Large Icons" box, also in the appearance tab at the bottom you can change the font size

That is if you have XP, I'd assume its similar in Vista but Im not sure.

6/10/2009 2:01:40 PM

sorry...meant to put I'm running XP Pro. and thanks...that helped but some content is still small as shit.

6/10/2009 2:08:11 PM

Which content?

6/10/2009 2:10:53 PM

email content in my inbox (header info), also any text in Macola (out MRP system). let me see if I can get a screen shot.

6/10/2009 2:16:16 PM

6/10/2009 2:25:51 PM

maybe this will work better. click on each pic to be redirected to picasa so you can zoom in on the pic for better resolution.

From random

From random

[Edited on June 10, 2009 at 2:30 PM. Reason : .]

6/10/2009 2:28:27 PM

I did some playing around and found that windows display settings don't affect the size of the text in e-mails or the subject lines in your Inbox.

Here's some details on changing the font sizes in Outlook: http://email.about.com/od/outlooktips/qt/et_listfontsize.htm

You're on your own in Macola.

6/10/2009 2:39:05 PM

NICE!!! That helped out a bunch. I guess I'm SOL for Macola. I could just drag it to my other monitor but that's the one I'M running SolidEdge on so I like to keep all my other shit on my laptop screen.

6/10/2009 3:47:52 PM

you can also click in the body of an email and hold down the control button on the keyboard while scrolling with the enter wheel on the mouse. it only changes the body text size and it goes away after you change emails..but hell, it should help you some at least

6/11/2009 10:55:18 AM

^^ Is it time for reading glasses, old man?

6/11/2009 11:23:24 AM

Quote :

"Original Problem Description: “It appeared to be some sort of spanning tree issue, but layer 2 kept routing - all of the layer 3 interfaces appeared to stop switching.”"

wat

6/11/2009 1:04:03 PM

lawl

how can you know what stp is and not understand the osi model

6/11/2009 1:10:25 PM

weird. i'm reading about RSTP right now

6/11/2009 1:18:21 PM

Quote :

"Sorry, this has come with the virus. I could not down load. Please re-send."

okay, not really inept, but the zipped file I sent appears to have "the" virus.

6/11/2009 4:19:11 PM

So we've got a temp receptionist that started this week that will be here for a month or so. She's about 1000 years old and can't do even the simplest things on the computer. Of course one of her duties is to schedule conference room use for our 4 conference rooms in shared calendars in outlook. This has proved to be too much for her.

Since my office is the the one closest to her, I'm the one she calls aver 35 seconds so I can come up there and do things like double click Word for her. IT'S RIGHT ON YOUR DESKTOP LADY.

This day is going to be long. And the next month is going to be the longest month in recorded history.

6/19/2009 9:01:31 AM

recorded in your outlook calendar?

6/19/2009 9:15:35 AM

^^
Plenty of people in the unemployed thread in The Lounge that probably wouldn't mind replacing her. Hell sounds like I could write a script to replace her.

6/19/2009 3:23:03 PM

Let's see if I can make this wall of text convey at least some snippet of an interesting venture into the land of Tier 2.5? residential dsl support.

So here's the scenario. I have a customer that has a fairly decent small business account with a major DSL provider and for the moment it's much more economically feasible than installing 10 or so T1 circuits or fractions thereof.

Anyway, there's a particular sql-esque secure website that the company uses to order supplies, fill workorders, check inventory, etc. For some reason at the owner's house, 10 miles away from the main offices (Same dsl provider, completely different IP scheme though) this website is completely unusable because every request takes at least 60 seconds to get a response.

I originally encountered this because lightning hit the dsl gateway/router combo and I used what I had on hand to get them up and running in the interim. First variable eliminated. I cleaned up every PC on the network and checked the site on my laptop. Second variable eliminated.

Later that day, back at the office all hell broke loose. Apparently another proprietary software program the company uses (based on a telnet session) is taking ages to connect, sometimes even timing out. Productivity is halted. At this point, I jump in a support session, explain everything and after a while of bouncing ideas around we realize either forward or reverse DNS is down. (I get them confused). I call the IT guys for their software company, we add a couple host records and bam, problem solved. So fast forward two months later and this piece of info is so far archived in my head I don't even think to associate it with the website, but that's the only common link.

So right as I'm grasping at straws, recalling anything and everything I can to help convince this T2 rep the problem is on their end he puts me on hold to conference his supervisor. "Sir if the line is clean, the speed is correct and there is no tracert issues that is the end of our responsibility. Please contact the owner of the site."

I understand that Ahmet, but would you mind checking the DNS on ip *.*.*.* "I'm sorry, I don't have that capability." "What? You can't do an nslookup on this customer's IP?" "Well, we can go to a website to find out this information such as <insert thick accented checkip.dyndns-esque site>" "No, Ahmet I need you to see that the IP resolves to your company's hostname, but the hostname will not resolve back to the IP" "I think this is the problem as it's the only common issue I can think of, I'm at my wit's end, hence the phone call."

"I'm sorry sir, but the customer needs to reset their modem. I will assign a new IP. For you to think that any one pool of our IPs are provisioned differently or are in any way allowing one site not to go through is just not possible." "I'm sorry, there is nothing else we can do." "Ahmet, I can see this is going absolutely nowhere, it's my fault for not contacting the business support division directly. Next time I will know better and save myself the two hours. etc etc"

Hour later, on the drive home I get a call from ole Ahmet. "Brian, I have researched this issue for you and it does appear that there is an issue with the reverse dns in this particular pool of IP addresses. I have alerted your customer, opened a trouble ticket and I have noted the account. I apologize for this inconvenience. Blah blah. Dude probably makes quadruple my measly salary.

Didn't proof that, just a rant apologies if it's hard to read (to those that even tried).

6/22/2009 9:00:40 PM

As a general rule in IT, anyone that says that something isn't possible, is an idiot. If there is anything that I've learned over the years, there is always another way, unless the hardware is smoking.

6/23/2009 10:21:58 AM

K, here's one from my Mom - I have no clue what she is talking about and I googled it, found nothing...

Hi!

We just bought a copy of MS Professional 2007 at Office Max for our computer. When I went try to install, I have to enter in the product key (25 letters plus dashes). There is a character I don't recognize.... the first two letters of the code are JV and then it has what looks like two periods (but they're up high) then two more letters.

Do you know what the two high periods are/represent? Ma

6/25/2009 1:06:44 PM

Sounds like a rubbed-off M.

6/25/2009 1:13:39 PM

my mom cant understand a drop down box

last time i used logged into aim from her computer, she thought i corrupted it b/c my screen name came up on the signin screen.

however, she's able to uninstall/reinstall

to "get her name back"

6/25/2009 1:15:31 PM

^^what I was thinking, but it could be several other letters too.



^Yeah, my mom's no dummy but she does some weird things on the computer. She spent five minutes looking for the "two high periods" key and checked two other keyboards.

[Edited on June 25, 2009 at 1:21 PM. Reason : s]

6/25/2009 1:19:38 PM

Just had this question asked:

"Should I plug my internet cable into the socket labeled data or voice?"

<carlface>

[Edited on July 20, 2009 at 4:26 PM. Reason : *]

7/20/2009 4:26:43 PM

^fyi, there was a time when you got internet over phone lines

7/20/2009 8:56:03 PM

ya these days you get your phone over your internet line!

7/20/2009 9:36:18 PM

omg, i can has vlan's too?

7/20/2009 9:42:52 PM

*disclaimer: there are a lot of really, really awesome friends & people I know from India. This is not a story about those people.*

Until this week, I was working as a recruiter for an IT staffing agency, and I was primarily responsible for finding server/network engineers and such.

The best calls to consultants I'd make were to fresh-off-the-boat H1B visa holders through shady sub-vendors. Contained in their resumes, mainly fabricated for them by their sub-vendors, were promises of immense and incredible IT infrastructure knowledge. Their early years of experience found them working as Network or Server Architects mere months after graduating from Mumbai-Bumfuck Tech or some other such unpronounceable institution of higher learning. Fully armed with an arsenal of Cisco associate and professional "certifications," these masters of technology were fully prepared, in their own minds, for the IT challenges we Americans were too stupid or lazy to fix.

I have attempted to recreate a portion of my favorite conversation I had this spring between one of these IT superheros and myself. Names may or may not have been changed to protect the identity of the stupid:

Me: "So, Vishwanathan, tell me about your last project. What were you responsible for?"

V: "Well, you know, I was responsible for the network and the servers. I did a lot."

Me: "What do you mean 'responsible for'? Did you just keep them up and running, did you build them? What specifically were you responsible for?

V: "Yes, yes, I built them. I kept them running. Yes, that is correct. It should say all this on my resume. Do you have it?"

Me: "Yes, I have your resume right here. However, all you did was list off the names and product numbers of ten different routers and switches that are fifteen years old. I was hoping you could tell me a little bit about what you did with them?

V: "Yeah, sure, well, you know, I put them into the network. When one went down, I'd get a new one. It is all pretty technical, but I kept it all running."

Me: "Right.... then how big was the team you were on? What portion of the company did you help support?"

V: "No, no, no team. It was just me. I supported everything."

Me: "Um, Vishna, maybe I've got an out of date resume. It says your last job was with IBM Global Services, India. Where were you supporting a network by yourself?"

V: "No, no I was doing all of IBM myself."

Me: "By yourself?"

V: "Yeah, sure."

Me: "You were supporting IBM's GS division in India entirely by yourself?"

V: "Yeah, sure, that is correct. I know it is hard to understand for someone like yourself who is not technical. It was all very technical. I can easily explain this in a job interview."

Me: "Right... and what about the server environment, did you support that by yourself too?"

V: "Yes, I was in charge of designing, building, and maintaining servers. I did it all."

Me: "What platform were they running?"

V: "Siebel, but I think we had some Sun Solaris servers too."

Me: "......... Uhh, Yeahh... can't forget about those pesky Solaris servers. Sooooo, I think I've got everything I need from you.. I've got your resume right here. I appreciate the conversation, and I'll send you a follow-up email with my contact information."

V: "Do you have my email address?"

Me: "Uhh, I've got..... uhh.... Krishnalovescobal@yahoo.com?"

V: "Yeah, sure, that is correct."

----

I wish i could say this conversation was unique, but sadly I had a couple of these a month.

Hope someone enjoyed all that!

[Edited on July 21, 2009 at 8:48 AM. Reason : .]

7/21/2009 8:45:17 AM

I lol'd

Not sure how much you know about cisco switches/routers but you should start asking him some pretty in depth questions.. I'm sure his responses would be gold..

7/21/2009 9:49:27 AM

wow.

I don't think I've ever seen such delusional hubris from an Indian (like still in the country) before.

7/21/2009 9:59:00 AM

What amazes me is companies are willing to pay one person a contractor for over six months to fix something that could be solved by one to two weeks worth of consulting employees.

7/21/2009 10:31:12 AM

yeah..i see shit like that all the time. one company i know was paying $1,000 a day for this "consultant" to come in and show them how to cut costs. we presented the same shit we've presented to that company 19 fucking times that would save everybody money. they still didn't do a damn bit of it.

7/21/2009 10:34:11 AM

^,^^ this also never ceases to amaze me.

7/21/2009 10:38:10 AM

But they'll sure as shit fire people or cut wages because of "the economy". WEEE!

I am grateful that I have a job, but I do not want management thinking they can lord this over me. What a fun game this is!

7/21/2009 11:58:24 AM

Quote :

"I don't think I've ever seen such delusional hubris from an Indian (like still in the country) before."

It's not an everyday thing, but I'd see at least one or two guys like this a week. The scary thing is that they get jobs eventually, if only for a month until the client would cancel their contract for being inept. Eventually they pick up enough in their brief engagements to be able to take something low-level yet steady and just go from there. Worst case scenario they're on the boat back to India.

7/21/2009 11:59:55 AM

just to point out the obvious, there's plenty of incapable american IT staff too

7/21/2009 12:08:15 PM

^ yeah, but we expect that

7/21/2009 12:16:23 PM

I love this thread so much

There are a group of ladies upstairs who had their computer internet privileges taken away because one employee got caught looking at porn before I got there.



So they all got ipod touches.

And for like three weeks they were asking me how to set them up to use the wireless so they could screw around with some of their downtime. They are sweet ladies, and I love them to death.

They reealllly crack me up, though.

7/21/2009 1:59:42 PM

guy at work: so internet explorer on my moms computer (desktop) keeps closing right after you open it
me: well, if she doesnt have much on it just bring it in and i'll reinstall windows and be done with it, it's prolly some kind of spyware or some shit like that she's downloaded.

...he brings it in, i find all kinds of shit she's dl'd, erase everything, reinstall windows, works fine...

same thing happens a week later. he brings it back in, i format it again, install everything again. this time add a bunch of shit to the hosts file to block shit, install ad block, make her links go to firefox with adblock instead of IE, etc

today he tells me it's doing it again and he's just gonna get her a wireless card and that should take care of it. i tell him that has nothing to do with it and it's something she keeps installing that's doing it. he tells me no, it's the shitload of messy wires under her desk that's causing the problem and without those it'd work fine. yea, he's dead fucking serious.

W

T

F

[Edited on July 29, 2009 at 10:26 AM. Reason : gah]

7/29/2009 10:11:45 AM

Yes, because everytime you re-install the operating system and IE works perfectly, somehow her funky hardware setup at home breaks the OS by shooting electrodes into the windows OS...

LOL, quality.

7/29/2009 11:21:50 AM

I forgot to mention that it stayed here in my office once for over a week after I had reinstalled everything and worked perfectly. I used it for work a few days just to make sure everything worked fine.

Then within 2 days of being back in her hands it was broke. But yea, it's definitely related to those wires!!1!

[Edited on July 29, 2009 at 11:25 AM. Reason : a]

7/29/2009 11:25:18 AM

One of our clients keeps track of how much their users print/copy. If they print/copy more than 300 pages of B/W or 200 pages of color they get charged per page for the overage.

So this one user who's about as dim as they get calls me because the printer is obviously malfunctioning and spitting out hundreds of blank pages and pages with garbage on them mixed together. It had done this 3 times and she was yelling that she wasn't going to get charged for a printer malfunction.

So I go to her and see what's up. I say show me what you're printing. She pulls up this huge excel document with about 5000 rows and she has entire rows highlighted, therefore it extends for god knows how many columns.

So she "sets the print area" as she says she's doing, only instead of actually doing that, she's only highlighting what she wants to print, but never actually setting it. She hits print preview.

Right there on the print preview page it says "Page 1 of 297". I show her this. And then scroll through all the pages. About half are blank, the other half show those rows that are highlighting into oblivion across 228203920 columns.

I then showed her how to actually set the print area. The whole thing she wanted to print was only 20 pages. DURRRRRRR

So then she asks me if she's going to get charged for all of those. My answer: YES.

She said she might go through all of them and pull out the blank sheets to turn back in, but that'll take her a week, since she only has 10 fingers and toes to count on.

7/30/2009 9:37:48 AM